David Pope

When do analytics really provide value? All the time, of course. However, one of the best times for analytics to prove their value is when you are asked to do more with less. Often, the reason we are asked to do more with less is because of an economic downturn […]

How many of us have heard or even said the phrase, "If it's not broke, don't fix it." While on rare occasions this may be the correct approach, it is a statement that stops innovation and creativity in its tracks. You might as well say, "Because we've always done it that […]

How many of us have heard or even said the phrase, "If it's not broke, don't fix it." While on rare occasions this may be the correct approach, it is a statement that stops innovation and creativity in its tracks. You might as well say, "Because we've always done it that […]

As a follow-up to my previous Christmas blog post, Twas the night before big data, I give you ... Bayesian network, the directed acyclic graphical (DAG) model ( yeah, yeah, I know it doesn’t quite have the same ring as last year’s title, but you'll recognize the tune) You know Linear and […]

After attending the SAS Day at Texas A&M University on Oct. 2, I came away with a new perspective on some of the different educational offerings to help fill the analytic talent gap (which according to studies and research continues to grow). In essence, there is a yin and yang of […]

SAS has been developing "secret sauce" technology for more than 38 years. Whether it has to do with being platform independent, processing in-database, running across a grid, or analyzing data in-memory like our SAS LASR Analytic Server or our High Performance Analytics offerings, secret sauce makes everything taste or, in […]

You may have heard the phase that big data is the new oil. Well (pun intended), if that is the case, then analytics should be thought of as the fracking technique used on data to improve the value you get from this new oil. Fracking is actually just one […]

IT folks love SQL (Standard Query Language). Once you know how to program in SQL, you can work with almost any database because it is a standard. However, SQL is NOT a standard for doing analytics. The SAS programming language pre-dates SQL and even though SAS does SQL, SQL does not […]

Business Intelligence (BI) can mean many things to many people, but generally BI is associated with business reports. When you fold business analytics (BA), especially advanced analytics that are predictive or prescriptive, under the BI umbrella you inherently dilute the value proposition that analytics can provide to an organization. Why […]

In the energy industry, oil and gas companies as well as utilities are struggling with many changes at once. First, they're facing what the oil and gas industry has coined "the big crew change," meaning the retirement of those with the most skills and experience on how to run their […]